Ever in Your Favor
by BodoniBold
Summary: A dark fairy tale based on German folklore. Everlark soulmates. Canon universe.
1. Chapter 1

_*** Notes**_

 _Okay guys, I'm going to let you in on a secret. I am obsessed with telling the Hunger Games from Peeta's prospective. This story is my second go at it._

 _At first I thought I was writing a completely AU fantasy/fairy tale story, but it has turned out strangely canon-compliant. Yeah it's definitely different from my by-the-book Peeta POV fic, The Last Tribute, and its up-coming sequel Burnt Offering (Catching Fire and Mockingjay) but it's grounded in the Hunger Games canon universe, admittedly with a dark fairy-tale spin. I've almost head-canoned myself into believing that Peeta did have a little something special up his sleeve..._

 _This story will be told in vignettes that stretch from Peeta's first day of school to the epilogue._

 ** _Chapter 1_**

 **Age 5**

Peeta's brothers did what they always do; they left him behind. Even though Peeta was five now and a big boy and could go to school, both his brothers zoomed ahead into the school.

And Peeta was stuck in front of the ash-gray building with his father, waiting, waiting, waiting in line to register with the other first-year students. The line was still so long it stretched out the door and onto the cracked sidewalk.

But waiting was better than being too-young and trapped at home all day with his mother or downstairs in the bakery with his father, kneading and kneading until his arms fell off.

The little boy waggled him backpack, listening to the happy rumble of his new supplies. Everything was dancing all together in his pack. The notebook, folders, mat rolled up teeny-tiny, pencils. And best of all was a box of twelve crayons in all different colors.

Nothing was extra new, the supplies or even the backpack, but they were his now. The really, really good thing, his father always said, was that everything would stay his, too. Peeta got all the hand-me-downs because he was the youngest and the downest.

The line crawled forward and the gap between them and the woman and boy in front of them grew huge while his father stared off. Peeta tugged at his sleeve, but the man just plucked him up, swinging the boy into his arms. The boy craned his neck to see what his father was looking at.

It was a woman in the next line, the one for first-year girls. "You see that woman," his father said. "I wanted to marry her, but she married a coal miner instead."

His father never sounded like that, far away and lost, as if he weren't really there talking to Peeta at all. He wrapped both arms around his father's neck and squeezed tight. Peeta didn't want him to be sad; it made a tight, yucky feeling boil up in his chest. It was the same feeling he got whenever his mother started yelling.

Peeta glanced over his father's shoulder at the woman, ready to turn his extra mad eyes on the person making his father sad.

There wasn't anything special about her; the blonde woman looked like any of the other mothers waiting in line. She cuddled a baby with softly curling blonde hair against one hip. There was a girl skipping around in the still-green grass right next to the woman, a smiling little girl with two dark braids bouncing behind her.

His father turned away, finally catching up with the line, but Peeta was watching the girl now. She wore a red plaid dress, neat and starched, with a hem that brushed against a scrapped up knee, the bruised skin almost as bright a color as the dress. Her shiny black patent leather shoes were getting wet in the glowing morning dew of the grass, but she didn't seem to care. The girl was making the baby in her mother's arms laugh.

She was in his year, wasn't she? That's nice. They could be friends.

Something in Peeta's chest unwound and melted as he watched the girl, crept down both arms until they were heavy. It was like the feeling he got right before he drifted to sleep at night, safe and warm.

But he wasn't sleepy.

His mind raced with images of him with the little girl with dark braids. Them, sitting next to each other in the cold gray school. Peeta would share his almost-new box of crayons with her and she'd smile. They'd eat lunch together. At naptime, they would set their mats up next to each other, hold hands while they sleep. After school, they would play together in the nearby field before going home.

Or better yet, she wouldn't have to go home. She could live with him at the bakery. And Peeta would never let his mother yell at her or throw things or hit her. And they'd both sleep in his bed at night and he would hold her close to keep her safe….

That last thought was strange. Peeta didn't know why they should sleep together or hold hands or any of the other things, but his mind kept throwing pictures at him and they all looked _right_. Him and her, as easy as breathing.

He belonged with her.

The boy's line moved faster than the girl's and before long, Peeta and his father made it to the entrance of the building. As soon as they stepped into the narrow space and Peeta couldn't see the little girl anymore, he heart began to pound in his chest. He gulped in a breath, but the air felt thick and he couldn't swallow it down, it kept escaping through his teeth. His little body began to tremble.

Other things trembled, too. Things up and down the dimly lit hallway. Stacks of books clattered off tables, chairs overturned. One lady tripped, sprawling face first to the linoleum floor. Peeta squirmed out of his father's arms, forcing a little _chance_ to catch him by surprise. He needed to get outside to the girl. What if something happened to her?

The little boy sprinted for the door, but he didn't make it. His father recovered enough to make a grab for Peeta's legs, tackling him to the ground.

The boy howled. "I need to go!" He didn't sound like himself, but like some shrieking monster, even to his own ears. He clawed at his father's hands and twisted wildly, trying to get outside. He knew the other people were staring, but he didn't care. He had to go. He bucked, wrenching one leg free. _Almost_ , he thought. _Just a little bit more_.

Using his own _chance_ , his father got to his feet and flipped the boy upside-down over his shoulder. Peeta still struggled, but his father's _chance_ was much stronger than any five-year-old's.

The man carried Peeta to a nearby bathroom with high, tiled walls an indeterminate color between gray and green. He sat the boy down on the counter top. Both of them were breathing hard, their twin ragged gasps fighting with the random dribble of the faucets in the dank room.

The man reached over to the paper towel dispenser, ripping a couple of the sheets down before wetting them and wiping the little boy's face.

"What got into you, boy? You know better than to use _chance_ in public."

Peeta watched his father's hands as they scrubbed at the dirt staining his cheeks. Angry red scratch marks crisscrossed the man's skin. He shouldn't have done that, he shouldn't have scratched his father. Guilt nibbled at his edges, but the need to get out to the girl gnawed at his chest.

"I want to go outside, now," Peeta said. With his father's _chance_ holding him in place, it was the best rebellion he could muster.

"Why?"

"There's a little girl. With dark braids," Peeta said. "I need her." Out loud the words didn't make sense, Peeta knew, but it didn't stop his need to go to her, to see her, make sure she was still all right.

The wet paper towel plopped from his father's hand to the floor. And he didn't even pick it up, even though it made a mess. He seemed fixed in place, his eyes set on a spot somewhere over Peeta's head.

"He's only five," he said to the wall. The man turned away from the boy and dragged a hand through his hair.

When his father turned back to him, he leaned down and gazed for a long moment into the boy's eyes, searching for something.

It made Peeta fidget.

Whatever he saw there made him inhale with a sharp, hissing sound. The man took a deep breath before putting his hands on Peeta's shoulders. "You know how we aren't like most people, Peeta?"

Peeta nodded absently. He was looking for a gap in his father's _chance_ so he could get away. The little girl was in the building now, somehow he could feel it, but he said what his father had taught him to say, "Only us and the Cartwrights at the shoemakers."

"Yes, us and the Cartwrights," his father said. "And this feeling you have? It's one of the ways we're different. It's like our ears and like _chance_."

Peeta's hands strayed up to his ears, feeling past the normal curved lobes that people could see and up to the flour-dusted part people could _not_ see. The sharp tips that poked through his wavy blond hair.

His father squeezed Peeta's shoulder a little. "Even meeting her now, you shouldn't have reacted to your _match_ until at least puberty. I don't know why…" he voice trailed off, but the word _match_ hummed in Peeta's mind. The little girl was his _match_.

"What I'm trying to say is that this girl isn't like us. If you race out there now, throwing _chance_ left and right, you're going to scare her. Is that what you want?"

Peeta shook his head. The last thing he wanted was to scare her. The thought made his tummy hurt. "I didn't mean to force _chance_ , it was on accident."

His father gave him a hard look and Peeta remembered the purposeful shove he'd given him. "Mostly on accident," he amended.

"And just because you want…," he trailed off again, rubbing a hand down the side his face…I don't know… you're so young… maybe you want to play with her all the time? Whatever you're feeling, it doesn't mean she feels it. She's still a stranger. You don't know her and she doesn't know you."

His father sounded sad again, but Peeta was shaking his head. No. No. No. All the pictures that filled his mind earlier flickered and dimmed. His father was telling him that the girl with the braids, his _match_ , might never like him, might never be his friend.

It felt like someone was trying to turn him inside-outside, saw him up until he was drippy and red like the pig they slaughtered last spring.

Up and down the counter, faucets started to rumble and gurgle, but his father stopped the noise with a frown.

"And you can never use _chance_ on your _match_ , not ever. Do you hear me? It's wrong. Always. Not to mention it puts us in danger. We're in hiding."

Peeta's face turned red, not with embarrassment, but with anger. How could his father think he would try to force _chance_ with the little girl? If she liked him because of _chance_ , it wouldn't be real.

For another long moment, his father studied him. "The lure of a _match_ is too strong, and you're too young to control it. You'll end up revealing us. I'm going to have to bind you."

"Noooo," Peeta cried out. "Don't! I promise I'll be good!" Peeta wrestled against the _chance_ that held him. He broke the hold for a moment, but his father caught him before he could jump from the counter.

"You're not safe around her."

"I am!" Peeta screamed. "I'm safest around her and she's safest around me."

"It's either a binding or we teach you at home." His father voice had gone flat in the way that meant no more discussion.

Peeta couldn't remember ever seeing the little girl at the bakery. If he were homeschooled, he might never see the girl again. And he needed to see her. She had somehow become the most important thing in his whole world.

Peeta stopped struggling and held out his arms.

The man reached into his back pocket and drew out a sachet of flour. It was their medium and the reason they owned the only bakery in District 12. The man took a pinch of the fine white powder and drew a line around one of Peeta's wrists, then the other until Peeta wore two flour bracelets that only he and people like him could see.

"Earth to earth and blood to blood. Peeta Mellark is bound from communicating with his _match_ until his eighteenth birthday…or until she needs him, whichever comes first."

The howling monster that broke out of Peeta in the hallway raked its claws against his insides, demanding he fight this binding and find the girl, that she needed him _now_ , would always need him.

Eighteen? That was years and years away. He was already five and he'd be five plus five plus five again and still not eighteen. He'd be a grown-up. Years and years until he could even talk to the girl.

This was bad. Peeta let the heavy teardrops stream down his face, a silent plea. Only his father could change or annul the binding.

His father's eyes found the ground. "You have to trust me, it's for the best."

He wiped Peeta's face again in silence and then led the boy back to the deserted registration table and then to his class.

Two dozen boys and girls sat crossed-legged on a circle rug around a standing woman. The woman, Peeta's new teacher, found a place for the boy. It was a spot to the left of the girl with the dark braids.

His heart pounded in his chest. He opened his mouth.

 _Hi, my name is Peeta._

He willed his mouth to say the words, but the binding blocked his voice. He could talk to the blond boy sitting on the other side of him, but if he even thought of talking to her, his voice froze.

The teacher came back with a name tag and pinned it to Peeta's shirt.

"Now, we were just about to learn the Valley Song," the teacher said. "Does anybody already know it?"

Before Peeta could blink, the girl's hand shot straight up in the air. The teacher helped her up onto a table, and, without a hint of shyness, she began to sing in a voice so sweet the mockingjays outside stopped to listen.

If sounds were colors, Peeta would have pulled out his best pastel crayons. Rolling swirls of blues and greens, a dusting of pink, yellow just at the edges. It was a song of hope and spring.

The new beast that now lived inside Peeta's chest and raged against his binding, liked that the girl was so close, even if Peeta couldn't talk to her. It curled up, lulled to sleep by the sound of her voice. Some of the pressure that had been building inside of him dissipated and Peeta felt a little more like himself.

Much too soon, though the song was over and the girl hopped down from the table, not at all afraid of the distance. She landed right in front of Peeta's crossed legs. Then she looked at him. _Right at him_. Gray-gray eyes, not the color of ash, but of storm clouds looked at him. His heart boomed. _Thump_ , _thump_. _Thump_ , _thump_. Fast, like he'd run and run.

 _I'm Peeta._ He said it in his head.

The girl didn't smile at him, but she didn't frown, either. After a second, he had to look away or else his heart would explode.

"Thank you, Katniss," his teacher said. "Everyone please give Katniss a round of applause."

As the class clapped, all Peeta could think was, "Her name is Katniss. Katniss is my _match_."

The girl, Katniss, gave a little bow and said, "Thank you for your consideration," before sitting back down next to him.


	2. Chapter 2

Age 11_January

Peeta kicked his backpack into the corner along with his self-control. He was shaking from the strain of holding everything back, of keeping pity and confusion balled up tight in his gut along with slimy doubt.

He stalked through his family's living room, passed racks of fresh baked bread with crackling lacquered crusts and on into the heart of the bakery where the wood-burning ovens pulsed and breathed.

The boy stopped at the doorway and watched his father for a moment, studied the pain etched in the man's stance as he stood there, head bowed, arms spread wide with fingers clenched along the edge of the countertop. Peeta couldn't see his face, but he could almost smell his father's pain mingling with the scent of baking bread.

"Did you do it?" These were whispered words, spoken low, but Peeta stayed in the doorway. He didn't trust himself to be in the room with his father if the answer were yes.

His father turned his head just enough to see Peeta over his shoulder. "Do what?"

His fist pounded against the doorjamb. "Did you use _chance_ to kill my _match's_ father because he was married to yours!"

This was the first time Peeta had ever said aloud what he'd guessed.

The idea had niggled, bad tooth-like at the back of his mind ever since that first day when he saw his father watching Katniss' mother. The longing, the sadness. Everything about that first day of school was branded into Peeta's mind and that stuck out.

And something had always been off between his parents, a lack of shared smiles and warmth between them. As far as Peeta could see, they just  
existing in the same place at the same time.

His father's head snapped up, already tense muscles stiffened into stone. The man grabbed a handful of flour from the plastic bin on the floor and tossed it in the air. It hung, suspended for a moment, before floating down, snow-like, in a perfect five-foot circle around him. "If you're asking questions like that, we do it in here."

An elfish circle, cast in flour, forged at the absolute edge of _chance_. A circle that forced the people inside to speak truth. No sound carried beyond it and no word could be repeated outside of it.

He fixed his eyes on his father. Peeta didn't want the answer to be yes, but why else would the man call a circle? He swallowed the guilt and the fear and the grief that wasn't even his and edged onto the flour disc.

"So you think I'm a murderer, now?" he yelled as soon as Peeta was inside. "And a coward too, if I used _chance_ to cause that mine collapse."

"I think Katniss' mother is your _match_. I think you'd do what it takes to have her." Peeta knew he'd do anything for Katniss. He spent most of his waking hours thinking of ways to get around the binding.

"She is my _match_." The words were so quiet, Peeta wasn't sure he heard them. "But we choose different paths years ago."

"That doesn't answer my question." You couldn't lie in a circle, but you could dance around the truth and not really answer.

"No, I did not kill him!" The man paced the edge of the circle, leaving footprints in the flour that disappeared moments later. "You know why I never went after him?" his father asked, turning back to Peeta abruptly, glaring with a bitterness that didn't hide his relief at saying these old pent-up words. "Because I could feel how happy he made her—happier than I ever could. And that's what you do for your _match,_ you put her first. Now all I can feel is my _match_ grieving for another man."

Peeta closed his eyes against his father's words, shied away from imagining that kind of pain. "Then let me put my _match_ first. Take the binding off so I can help Katniss."

"And what would you say to her, today of all days? What would make a difference?"

Peeta didn't answer him, couldn't answer him. It was so strange—how was it that he felt so much and Katniss felt nothing at all? How could they be a _match_ if everything he felt was one-sided?

He was used to picking up bits of Katniss' emotions, used to feeling the odd shifts of joy or anger or sadness that didn't belong to him. He didn't begrudge sharing his heart with her, being a depository for her spare emotions. But now, Katniss' grief cut through him like a wind battering a mountainside, chipping off edges, carving grooves.

Something cracked inside Peeta and he sank to the flour-covered floor and watched the streaked lines his feet made through the circle. The flour swirled, absorbing the marks, making the circle whole again.

Yesterday during lunch, they'd sounded the mining accident sirens. Most of the people—students and teachers alike—had raced to the mines, some just wanted to witness the burning chaos, but almost everyone knew at least one person who spent their days mining the coal seams. Peeta had come home from school early draped in Katniss' distress.

Her grief had woken him at dawn and he had known then that her father was dead. He'd only managed to fall asleep after a dose of sleep syrup his mother had forced on him when he wouldn't eat dinner, yelling that she couldn't let him get sick because he had chores to finish.

He'd lain there breathing in and out against the rib shattering weight of her sadness, wanting to hurt somebody. And his father had seemed like a good target.

His father sat down on the flour-covered floor next to him. "You have to remember; this…isn't our grief. We haven't loss someone we…someone we love."

Peeta traced circles in the flour, causing the powder to gather into tiny tornadoes at his touch. He and his brothers had made all kinds of flour models when they were younger. He blew lightly and the flour spread back over the floor. He stared down at it. "Why do we feel this way if it doesn't matter?"

The man shrugged. "It's just the way we are."

Age 11_April

His father was gone and Peeta was terrified.

Not really gone, but not really there, either. He went about his work, did all the things he was supposed to, said all the things he was supposed to, but he was gone. Every day he drudged through work then disappeared upstairs to take syrup and sleep.

And his mother drank the clear liquor they sold at the Hob, the District's black market and got meaner every day. His mother was human so Peeta didn't know how much she understood about _chance_ or _matches_ , but she knew enough to be bitter and she took it out on her sons. And for some reason—Peeta figured it was because she was their mother—she was immune to _chance_.

Peeta didn't know how long it would be before his mother imploded and really hurt one of them. The slaps were normal, he could take the welts from her belt, but she threw a bottle at his brother Hagan the other day that would have smashed into his head if he hadn't moved at the last moment.

Peeta's world shrank to the hours between his mother's rages when both his parents were passed out in different parts of the house.

He spent most of these hours hiding in the space under the stairs with one hand cupped around a flashlight and the other holding a piece of graphite. Peeta drew to escape and because drawing was _his_. It wasn't some freak power he had inherited and had to keep hidden.

Some days drawing let him disappear far enough into himself that he was alone. The pencil scraped across the backs of receipts and old homework pages, giving life to flowers and trees and flying birds. He drew the endless green woods that surrounded his district, the places his ancestors would have made home before they were trapped along the humans. And, when he wasn't really watching what his hand did, he drew Katniss.

Peeta hadn't seen her much since the mining accident. She was absent from school the whole month afterwards and had only been there sporadically ever since.

He guessed she was helping her mother.

From the way Peeta's father walked around like a living shadow, it didn't look like she was doing well. Katniss' own grief lifted enough for Peeta to function, but it was always nearby, striking him at strange moments.

Like just then.

Out of nowhere his heart started to beat fast.

As clear as any siren, panic boiled through Peeta's body. With no conscious thought, he was up and out of the bakery. He found himself out in the icy spring rain. The rain pounded down on him as he made his way across the mud puddle that was once the backyard. His mother was standing by the row of garbage cans, blonde hair still done up in squishy foam rollers, bellowing down at someone little. Even though he couldn't hear her words yet, he knew she was drunk.

Peeta slipped up behind his mother to find the skeletal face of Katniss Everdeen peering up at him.

She was thin, her luminous gray eyes huge and shadowed in her gaunt face, her patched and soaking clothes clinging to the sharp angles of her body. She clutched the lid from their garbage can in her hand.

She looked like the people starving in the Hunger Games.

Peeta grasped at their connection, yanked it, shook it, tried to see how this was possible. How could she be so bad off and he not know about it? There was nothing there. Nothing, just a tingling numbness.

It was like she was dead.

He was screaming, wasn't he? The sound swelled in his head, but it wasn't coming out of his mouth.

"Don't you think I have enough to deal with? Now I have to police Seam brats pawing through my garbage? Where are the Peacekeepers when you need them? You want bread, you pay for it! Not that your kind care about laws and decency. "

His mother yelled on and on.

Peeta wanted to hit her, even though he'd never defended himself against her beatings. He'd never hated his mother before either, but, at that moment, if he could have used _chance_ against her, he would have opened a gulf in the earth to swallow her whole.

Katniss was starving, maybe even dying and he couldn't do anything about it. Frozen rain dripped down his back and grew to ice shards inside him.

Oh, so carefully, with sad, quiet dignity, Katniss placed the lid back on the garbage can and moved toward the road.

Still cursing, his mother sloshed her way back to the bakery, but Peeta kept watching Katniss. She made it to the apple tree at the edge of their yard before tripping over her own foot. She stumbled and didn't get back up, just lay in the mud and stared out into the rain.

Peeta forced himself to go back into bakery. A dozen loaves of baked raisin walnut bread were stacked on a rack in the center of the room. The other half of the dough was an over-proofed mess gurgling and growing on the counter. His father probably started baking then wandered off, distracted by whatever emotion his _match_ felt.

Peeta threw himself face-forward into the rack of baked bread, crashing it to the ground and knocking most of the loaves into the open fire. He shifted _chance_ , barely, just barely and used the peel to pull two of the loaves out before they were turned to complete blackness.

His mother's eyes cut him from across the room. "You useless rat! Came out of your little hidey-hole just long enough to cost me money!"

She wrapped one hand around Peeta's arm and the other around his father's discarded the rolling pin. The blow caught him square in the face, knocking him to the ground and tasting blood. He barely felt it. "I'll feed it to the pig. It won't go to waste."

He stayed down, head bent, pretending to be cowed and broken. Experience taught him that anything else would make it worse, go from bruising blows to broken bones.

She didn't say anything, but swayed on her feet, frowning down at him. He crawled backward before scrambling up and backing out of the room and into the rain. He hunched over the loaves to keep them dry.

Her reply finally found its way out of her liquor-doused mind. "Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature. Why not? No one decent will buy burned bread!" He ignored it.

This would be the hard part. He had to get the bread to her without communicating with her or letting his mother see.

Peeta threw bits of bread at the pig that sat in its sty, grunting and forlorn in the pelting rain. He looked to make sure his mother wasn't watching.

He took a step towards Katniss.

The binding rings on his wrists throbbed and tightened. _Okay, not that._

He threw a little more bread to the pig. Breathing hard, he concentrated on throwing the bread towards her.

The binding locked his arm. _Come on!_ He argued with himself _. This isn't communicating._

Something flickered along his link to her, the numbness dissolving into something warmer. He had her attention _._

 _Look, she needs me. She needs the bread._ He reasoned with the binding, willed it, put all the _chance_ he had into it until the binding relaxed just enough for him to throw, first one loaf, then the other. He still couldn't turn to her, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the bread land at her feet.

He went back to the bakery and closed the door behind him. He didn't want his mother to look out there and see Katniss walking down the road with two loaves in her hands.

He sagged against the door and let her relief wash over him and blend with his own.


	3. Chapter 3

Age 14

"So, tell me again why you can't make Gale Hawthorne fall in love with me?" Delly Cartwright skipped backwards over the paving stones, her yellow curls bouncing as she faced Peeta on the path to school. Like always, the girl crackled with energy, bright, bubbly energy that Peeta could almost see if he squinted.

It was a side effect of her non-humanness.

Short and plump with jewel-bright eyes and a face-splitting smile, Delly didn't look human—not that anyone ever noticed. Peeta could never decide whether it was an illusion like with his ears or just the power of her personality. Or maybe it was because everyone was used to seeing the bizarre getups of Capitol people on television. Compared to their surgically added scales or spikes or neon green eyes, Delly was positively normal.

She was some kind of hobgoblin or maybe an imp…Peeta couldn't be any more certain of what she was than he could of his own heritage. They were both centuries removed from their ancestry, all knowledge lost to the mist of years, years that left them piecing together scraps of old legends.

Delly's smile widened, showing delicately curved canines. "Are you ever going to answer me, Peeta?"

Peeta looked around the path. The paved path was still deserted, still shaded in the light of the rising winter sun—school wouldn't start for another couple of hours, but he always got there early. He had to.

Peeta knew that Katniss and Gale Hawthorne sometimes stopped by after a morning's hunt to sale his father squirrel and rabbit at the back door. Of course, his father bought Katniss' game—the money helped his _match_ and Peeta's. It was good. Peeta wanted his family to help hers. But, Peeta couldn't stomach seeing it, having her so close when he couldn't talk to her was bruising, chaffing his insides raw.

Seeing her with Gale Hawthorne was worse.

"You know _chance_ doesn't work that way," he told Delly. Although he wished it did. He'd have marry Gale off to Delly that day…if he could've lived with doing something so underhanded. His father's lessons had been ground into him forever. He had to be moral, be responsible, stay hidden.

"Now, Peeta you're telling me that you can make little gingerbread boys and girls get up and dance, but you can't make Gale ask me to the harvest festival?"

"The gingerbread thing was years ago, Delly," Peeta said. "Besides, flour is my medium, not human boys."

"Rock or stone, blood or bone—why does it matter what he's made of? I can build from anything."

"Well, I'm not you." That was their power, the Cartwrights, building anything, repairing anything. They mostly stuck to leather and shoes, but Peeta had seen Delly take apart, repair, and rebuild the bakery's oven in less than an hour.

"And…" she said, waggling her finger in the air, skipping forwards then backwards in a little gig. "I've seen you use _chance_ on people. Like when that prank backfired on Markus Caulfield."

"Mrs. Latimer's an old woman. She'd have had a heart attack if she found all those frogs in her desk."

Delly stopped in the middle of the path and pointed at him. "So you admit to using _chance_ on people."

"Yes, but I still couldn't with Gale."

"Why?"

"Well… because _chance_ only works by manipulating chance…the odds. I can only make something more or less likely to happen. I can't do the impossible."

Delly narrowed her over-bright eyes. "Peeta Mellark, are you implying that it would be _impossible_ for Gale Hawthorne to fall in love with me and beg me to accompany him to the harvest festival?"

"Considering that Gale Hawthorne hates people from town, has never spoken to you, and has never gone to the harvest festival…" Peeta let the words hang in the cold morning air. He kept walking, leaving her to glare at the back of his head.

"Fine," Delly said, skipping fast to catch up with him. "I only wanted Gale for your sake, to keep him away from Katniss."

"Delly..." Over the years, Delly had worn him down, wheedling the story out of him bit by bit. Whatever the Cartwrights were, they didn't have _matches_ , but it was better talking to her than to his silent father, still caught up in his own _match's_ lingering grief or to brothers who hadn't found their _matches_ and only saw its teasing power.

"What I really want to know is how you _know_ she's your one and only. How do you know there's not some other girl out there you'd like just as much and you're just wasting your time…"

Peeta stopped her mid-sentence with a kiss, pulling her in by the waist, quick, but it stopped her words. Delly blinked up at him.

"Feel anything?" he asked.

Delly opened her mouth then closed it. "Actually, no, not really," she said.

"Didn't think so." Peeta had kissed three girls in the last the year and felt absolutely nothing, worse than nothing, a kind of quiet revulsion that rattled and just felt wrong. "There isn't anyone else." He said this even though he knew it was hopeless.

He was walking down the same path his father had tread years before—having a _match_ who didn't want or need him, who had found someone else. Katniss spent her time with Gale Hawthorne now. Tall and handsome, the object of a thousand crushes—even Delly, no matter what she said—Gale Hawthorne would be any girl's pick.

And he didn't need the gossip, he had the confirmation of her own heart, the joy, the longing he felt through her in the mornings, knowing that she's out hunting with Gale in the forest that surrounded the district. Hunting was dangerous and illegal and getting caught meant instant death, but she was happy out there, happy with Gale.

Peeta did his best not to think about it too much. So he kissed other girls, reminded himself that his father had found someone. It was harder to forget what a disaster his parent's marriage was or that he knew that his father still felt his _match's_ emotions. He shoved those thoughts away, too.

"Look, Delly I've got to go. See you in class later?" The girl nodded, heading for the school, still looking slightly puzzled. She got there early to help the teachers—grading papers, straightening desks, fix pencil sharpeners whatever they needed.

Peeta had another errand.

He rounded the schoolyard and slipped into the half-collapsed building at the edge of the property. It had been the original school, but now it was a bombed-out shell, a relic of the rebellion almost seventy-five years ago that no one had ever bothered to knock down.

Peeta worked his way through the building, dodging broken liquor bottles, crumbling masonry, and the charred remains of clothes that littered the floor. Mockingjays, nested in dark corners, rustled their wings, ready to protect their territory, mean, but not dangerous because this wasn't breeding season.

He followed the fresh footprints already stamped into the dust until he reached a small alcove in the old cafeteria, the place only half as filthy as everywhere else and partitioned off by a tattered blanket suspended from the ceiling. Five mismatched chairs circled a battered folding table, its legs lopsided, its surface scratched and scarred with a generation of boys' initials.

In the chairs sat four boys, slumped low and lounging, trying to look bored in the dim light given off by the gas lantern on the table.

The crew got shuffled around once in a while, as kids left or graduated—four years ago Seth Johnson got sent to the Games—but today it was Ash, Junior Ernest, Tory and Ethen. He ate lunch with most of these guys every afternoon, but on Thursday mornings they played cards.

"Ready to lose, Mellark?"

"Shouldn't you still be home in bed, Junior?" Peeta asked. Junior was six months older than Peeta, but he looked younger than all of them with a round baby face and milk-pale blond hair.

And it didn't help that his name was Junior.

"Nah, the early bird and all that," Junior answered, tilting back in his chair until the first two legs were off the ground. "Today's my day." He picked up the worn deck from the table and flexed them until they flew, clacking into his other hand.

The cards were ancient, dog-eared and worn, stolen a dozen years ago from Peacekeepers at the Hob by some daredevil kid, a kid so awesome another boy volunteered for him when his name was called for the Games—that was the story, anyhow. Peeta didn't believe it. Nobody volunteered for the Hunger Games, not unless they want to die.

"Are we playing or are we talking?" Ash said. He kicked Junior's chair until the boy wobbled for a second, then lost his balance, sending the cards, the chair, and the boy crashing backwards to the dusty floor.

"You're mean, you know that?" Junior said scowling, picking himself up from the ground.

"Just practical," Ask said, grinning. Ash was the only dark-haired one. There was Seam blood somewhere in his line, but no one made fun of him for it because his dad was the principal and could sentence juvenile delinquents to hard labor in the coal mines.

Peeta helped Junior gather up the scattered cards. "Not so practical making him spill the only cards we've got."

"I'm sure you could steal us another pack," Tory said.

"Yeah," Ethen added to his twin brother's words. "You're one of the lucky Mellarks. You'd just slip into the Hob and slip out."

Peeta groaned and rolled his eyes. "You see how often I lose. If you want to see luck, you'll have to ask my brother."

The gambling had been their father's idea, a way to practice _chance_ , but, once their eldest brother Rieska graduated, Hagan, like usual, started showing off, winning hand after hand until the other kids started calling him Lucky Mellark.

"You're lucky enough," Junior drawled, leaning back in his chair again. "Never lose more than you win. Should call you Even Stevens."

Peeta pulled the coins of his ante out of his pocket and stacked them on the table in front of him. He took his time, trying not to look too startled that Junior had noticed that.

It wasn't like anybody could guess his secret, but he didn't like standing out, not when he had his family to protect, not in District 12 where being different could get you killed. "I just know when to quit. That's called moderation, Junior. You should try it."

Grumbling, Junior shuffled the cards. The game was an invention of mish-mashed rules created to compensate for the cards that have gone missing over the years or gotten so damaged that they had to be thrown away. The rules as they stood now had been around for three years, since the king of diamonds had gone missing.

All the combinations of numbers and suits flowed through Peeta's mind as Tory cut the deck for Junior and Peeta waited for the pull.

The pull told him how things would happen if he didn't do anything. Call it fate or luck or just the odds, the pull didn't like to be changed. It worked like a magnet, clinging to a certain set of events, repelling the alternatives. If Peeta weren't careful and he tried to force _chance_ , stretch it too far in either direction, try to stop a sure thing or make the impossible happen, the pull would snap back into place, reshape itself like a rubber band.

As Junior started dealing out the cards, the pull settled on Ethen, a vibration Peeta sensed more than he saw. He would have the winning hand. Peeta looked around the room, gauging the strength of the pull and how much it would let him change.

It wasn't too strong yet. He could make himself win, but he didn't need to be lucky, not with the seed Junior just planted. Neither did Ethen or Tory. Their mother worked with the mayor, they didn't need the money. Junior, then. His family lived on the edge of town. He hadn't won in a while and maybe he'd stop complaining, at least for a while.

Peeta reached out with _chance_ , letting it unfurl inside of him, shifting through the odds. A hard tug and the pull came away from Ethen and hovered over the five boys until Peeta fixed it to Junior.

Junior's hand hesitated on dealing the next card. "Did I skip somebody?"

"Yourself," Peeta said. He pointed to the four cards in front Junior. Everyone else already had five cards.

"Oh…I could have sworn," Junior muttered, dealing himself a last card.

Because he was sitting next to him, Peeta heard Junior's excited intake of breath when he flipped over his cards. He never could bluff, one of the reasons he usually lost.

Peeta turned over his own hand and grinned down at the sorry, but expected jumble of cards—a throwaway hand. But it wouldn't matter how many cards he pulled, the results would be the same.

It was a quick game. They were done with time enough to horse around on the way back to the main schoolhouse, shoulder punches and fake jabs, jokes, Junior beaming with a pocket full of jingling coins, the others swearing revenge next time they played, but no one really mad. It wasn't the kind of money people got angry over losing, just money that would've gone for a bag of candy at the sweets shop or a cookie after school, nothing for them or their families to miss, not like in some families…

It was almost as if thinking about her brought her into view. Katniss, with quick steps, smooth like the pace of a cat on the prowl, was walking into the building, her long black braid swinging behind her in rhythm with her steps.

Every time he saw her, it was like seeing her for the first time, sharp and throbbing, an old wound that still stung in bad weather. Having a _match_ felt a little like the pull of odds, as though some power wanted them together, drew him towards her while his father's binding was dragging him in the opposite direction.

And it was like being ripped apart.

For a heartbeat, her glaze met his across the schoolyard and he held it, for just that moment, before the binding drove him to break that tiny contact and she was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Aged 16—the Reaping**

The day of the Reaping was difficult for Peeta, not in the way it was for everyone else— _chance_ made it near impossible that his name would be chosen—but because, in the moment between the plucking of the names and their reading, when everyone else was willing, willing, willing it not to be them, Peeta would know. The pull would focus, congeal, solidify and it would be like a spotlight was shining on the poor kid.

And it was so hard not to do anything.

Every year, especially when the name called was one he knew, Peeta itched to reshuffle the odds, but he couldn't. What would he do, pin it on someone else? And who deserved to go to the Games? It was a death sentence.

Sweat dripped between his shoulder blades and down his back, making him shiver despite the heat. It was funny, this reaction, shivering in the heat, just like the festive banners flapped in the hot gusts of air, in an atmosphere that felt like a funeral.

This was the eighth Reaping he'd attended, the fourth with his name in the Reaping bowl. His father had started bringing him when his eldest brother turned twelve. It was good exercise, his father had said, for practicing self-control. His father was big on self-control, at least for everybody else. He was always hardest on Peeta, even though it was Hagan who used _chance_ to show-off.

His father never got over what happened when he was five and saw Katniss for the first time.

Today, Peeta didn't need his eyes to find Katniss in the crowd. She was standing to his left in the area roped out for the girls in their year. Her emotions pulsed like a beacon in his mind: worry, fear, and anger.

"Peeta, don't tell me _you're_ worried." Delly wrapped her arms around him from behind and squeezed.

"Well, Dell, today's not the happiest day, is it? Someone will end up going to the Games."

"I suppose you're right. And it is ever so serious, but it makes me happy to know that you're safe. You're like a brother to me, you know." She gave him a bright smile.

Peeta looked around to see if anyone was listening to them, but no one was paying attention. "No one's safe, Delly. Everyone whose name is in the Reaping bowl has a chance to be reaped. It's just that some of us have more of a chance."

"It won't be you, Peeta."

"It may not be me, but it could be someone we know." Peeta found himself looking over at the cluster of girls where Katniss was standing. She wore a blue dress and her hair was up in an intricate knot of braids. It had been a reflex, looking at her, seeking her out in the crowd.

Delly followed his eyes.

"It won't be her any more than it will be you," Delly whispered. "Don't think I don't know you shake up the odds for her."

"Delly…"

"And…even if she did go to the Games, I think she'd come home again. She's excellent at killing things."

"And if it's you?"

She smiled again, a little too wide for a human smile. "Oh, I think you know I'd come home."

"The Games would never be the same," he mused. Delly would have demolished the Games, ripped up every rule, turned everything into a weapon or a tool.

Delly nodded her blonde curls. "Exactly. If I ended up there, the Capitol might end them completely. My gift to the districts of Panem."

Peeta chuckled in the heat of that dreadful day and squeezed Delly's hand as she made her way to the other side of the square were the girls were stationed. He let the anxiety he'd been feeling roll away from him. After all, Delly was right. He'd been using _chance_ to protect Katniss since they were both twelve.

It wasn't exactly fair. By nudging the odds in her favor, it put more weight on each of the other names in the girl's reaping bowl. He tried to spread the extra weight evenly across the names, but he still felt guilty every year.

As soon as the town clock finishes striking two, the mayor moved up to the makeshift stage and began his long speech. It's the same every year and Mayor Undersee reads it in a monotone until it almost becomes background noise. It was the story of the time before Panem existed, when disasters ravaged the earth and later, of the Dark Days when the districts rebelled against the Capitol leading to the creation of the Hunger Games. That was the official story, at least the way the humans remembered it. The story passed down in Peeta's family was different.

It started long before the account told by Mayor Undersee, centuries earlier when humans began to hunt the elves and the piskies and the imps and all the creatures who were not human but lived beside them, whose abilities helped to balance the world. It told of how they were driven into the far places or forced to pass in human societies. It was then that the humans began fighting for dominance among themselves. They fought so hard and for so long, they finally broke the world.

All the non-human people struggled at the fringes of the world. Those who survived were trapped along with them and forced to integrate into their small encampments. Most humans had forgotten about their existence; those who remembered thought of them as myths. And that was the way it needed to stay.

The last words of Mayor Undersee's speech echoed through the square and Peeta felt the thousands of bodies surrounding him tense, as if made up of one flesh, of one creature, as Effie Trinket walked up to the stage.

The Capitol escort, Effie Trinket took the two children, one boy and one girl, back with her to the Capitol to take part in the Hunger Games, an annual slaughtering of the district's children for the amusement of the people in the Capitol. The last kid left standing gets to go home again. Effie was beautiful despite the wig and the face paint and all the bizarre outfits, but her association with the Games made her seem like a monster.

She gave her yearly introductions and greetings, giving us the Capitol's warmest welcome in this, the 74th annual Hunger Games. Her voice was a high-pitched warble, sing-song and affected, just like everyone in the Capitol.

Chance flickered with her every movement, the tilt of her hand, the shift of the frosting-pink wig perched on top of her head. The odds were diffused now, but in a minute, they would crystallize into reality and there would be nothing Peeta could do to stop it.

The audience tensed even more as she walked over to one of a pair of large glass bowls that held the girl's names. "Ladies First." She smiled her bloodless smile, showing teeth bleached even whiter than then her pale face powder.

She reached down to whisk her long-nailed hand through the large globe and the choices, names and faces, flipped through Peeta's mind like flipping through the pages of a books. The moment dragged.

Effie's hand was still rummaging through the globe when the pull fixed itself on one girl in the audience. A girl with a single dark braid and wide-set gray eyes.

Panic burned through Peeta and chance lashed out without his conscious direction. He couldn't talk to Katniss, couldn't interact with her, but whatever lived inside him couldn't let this happen. He couldn't let them choose Katniss for the Games.

He slashed at the force pulling at Katniss, willing it to detach, to find someone else. It was almost inevitable. The pull was very strong, but there was a tiny crack and Peeta focused on it, forced _chance_. He wrestled with it, pushed _chance_ further than he ever had, willed it, willed it, willed it until he couldn't see the square in front of him or the other children surrounding him. He was red-lining his powers, but what did it matter if he passed out, if he could get this away from Katniss….

It came away with a ripping feeling in his mind, a final snapping release, and then there was only the sound of his blood pounding through his veins.

Effie Trinket had her slip of paper now and was making her way back to the microphone.

Peeta closed his eyes and tried not to think about what he'd just done. Some other girl would be going to the Games. He'd sacrificed her, threw her away to save his _match_. Whoever the girl was he'd killed her just as surely as the Capitol would.

Guilty and shame burned holes in his stomach while the ground seemed to dance underneath him. He'd never done something so immoral.

But it was for Katniss. How could he have done nothing and let her be reaped?

The microphone let off a shrill whine as Effie Trinket picked it back up. She took her time unfolding the paper, Peeta could hear the slight rustle.

Maybe there was some way he could help whoever this girl was. He couldn't manipulate chance from across the country, he'd tried in secret years ago, watching the Games, trying to help some sympathetic tribute, but it didn't work. He could bind some chance into a cake or cookies and give them to her. It might help. Maybe even enough to bring her home.

"The female tribute representing District 12 will be…" Another pause. Whoever it was, Peeta promised himself, he would help her. He'd do his best to keep her alive. He'd bind chance to five cookies and give them to her before the Capitol people took her away. Five is the number of health. She'd have a fighting chance at getting back home. He'd collect donation and sponsor her. He'd steal the money if he had to.

Effie's voice was clear and loud as she read the name on the paper and as soon as Peeta heard it, Peeta sensed what he'd been too shaken to notice before—the pull hadn't detached completely from Katniss. It had stretched gossamer thin, but was poised to snap back into place.

But, in the meantime, it had found a temporary resting place. The name that echoed in the air and hung there like a poisonous fog wasn't Katniss, but it might as well have been.

"Primrose Everdeen."

Katniss' shock was crushing him. Peeta had to lean over, hands on his knees to breathe through his _match's_ pain. Peeta hadn't realized her little sister was old enough for the Reaping. She must have turned twelve in the last month.

He still remembered her as a tiny baby on his first day of school. His father bought goat cheese from her like he bought game from Katniss.

But, Prim wasn't going to the Games. The pull didn't want Prim; it wanted Katniss

Under the shock and anguish he could feel his match's determination and her love for her sister. And that was it. He couldn't do anything about; he couldn't stop it.

Katniss' voice rang out in the arena, strangled and gasping, but loud, like she was afraid no one would listen. "I volunteer. I volunteer as tribute."

She was walking now, towards the stage, head up, eyes forward and Effie was congratulating her on volunteering for the Games. Prim was screaming in the background, clawing at the shoulders of Gale who was carrying her to where the adults stood in the back.

Peeta felt the blood drain from his extremities, felt his fingertips go numb. He had to swallow the words rising in his throat. _They couldn't do this._

On stage, Effie had finished asking Katniss some silly question and the audience was stirring, bristling with shock and anger. Someone out in the center of the crowd answered Effie's ridiculous warble by raising his left hand, stick straight into the air, other hands went up around him, but he was looking at his _match_. The crowd was saluting her sacrifice in the way of their district. For the barest second her face crumbled and she almost gave into tears before every emotion disappeared from her face.

The link between them pulled like a chain and an atavistic urge had Peeta taking a step forward.

Effie, still smiling tittered over to the bowl holding the boy's names. Peeta was still looking at Katniss, at the blank way she stared out into the crowd of people whose hands were still in the air.

Effie's hand wave over the bowl of names.

The pull between him and Katniss pulled taut. He could feel his own name there, pulsing faintly among the choices.

He pushed it. Forced his name up through the wall of other names that swamped his. He did it quick, without thinking, just instinct. It was easy, easier than it should have been to push his name to the fore, drawn along be the influence of his _match_.

Effie plucked a piece of paper from the bowl.

It was in that moment between Effie taking the paper and her making it back to the microphone that Peeta realized what he had just done.

She unfolded the paper, leaned into the microphone and smiled her scary, skeleton smile. "Peeta Mellark."

And he began to shake like a rabbit.


End file.
